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Some time last week I went into a Wal-Mart to pick up some chicken. My wife and I boycott the place around a year ago because it's a shit-hole and their prices don't justify the hassle. Nevertheless, I needed chicken and nothing else was open. So I made my way into the store. Every Wal-Mart now is a sterile, hospital like environment. The poor employees and customers looks all looked miserable. I've worked for Wal-Mart, I understand their pain. Those stores a horrible place to shop let alone spend 9 hours working in.

I get to the meat department and grab some overpriced boneless chicken "something or other". Personally, I prefer bone in chicken thighs but my wife specifically requested these and I wanted to make her happy. As I'm handling the chicken packaging, I managed to get chicken juice all over my left hand. I don't know about you, but I'm not a huge fan of contracting salmonella. I made my way to the cleaning supply section and picked up some Clorox Wipes to clean my hands with. I opened it up, grabbed one, wiped my hands, and resigned to having to buy the entire package. These too, were profoundly over priced. How hard is it to keep some publicly accessible wet wipes around? I pay for my items and leave without incident. The whole ordeal (if you can call it that) was mundane.

Today, I received an e-mail from Wal-Mart listing the items I purchased, urging me to review them. Hold on a moment here, what? I never gave them my e-mail during that visit, so how did they know I bought any of that? It occurs to me that I have an account with them still.My wife and I used to use curbside pickup with them to avoid going into their shitty stores. They must have linked the debit card I used to buy the chicken with my e-mail address.

Frankly, this is completely unacceptable in every sense of the word. Who the fuck do they think they are, e-mailing me like this? I'm already more or less boycotting Wal-Mart. The fact that I go in there, find something akin to a hospital where you buy food, and then get stalked days later... It's fucking mind-blowing. In what world do these people think that's acceptable? To be surveilled in such a way? I don't want to help you, Wal-Mart. If anything, I want you gone. Your stores are hideous both inside and out. This is an act of contempt disgused as altruism. What kind of world do these executives live in where creeping your customers out is considered a good business decision?

I'm not surprised by the complete lack of tact, frankly. Wal-Mart first crossed me when I started working there. God forbid someone employ me, right? No,the problem was the incredibly creepy and weird culture around Sam Walton. If you've ever seen Severance, you may remember how Lumon Industries had a strange cult-like devotion to its founder, Kier Eagan. I shit you not when I tell you that Wal-Mart does the exact same crap with Sam Walton. I'm not the first person to point that out, either. I'd be surprised if the writers of Severence weren't inspired by Wal-Mart's weirdness.

You see, at Wal-Mart, Sam Walton is portrayed by management as a Christ-like figure. In the break room, there were photos of every manager. Furthest down, you'd have the Assistant Managers. This was ten to twelve photos, all in a horizontal line. Above that, two photos, both of the CO-Managers. Higher up, the Store Manager. Finally, above even him, at the very top-- Sam Walton's photo-- housed lovingly within an ornate frame. Clearly, it wasn't enough that he was positioned higher than everyone. They had to have the nice frame too. Why are we treating a dead redneck like a religious figure?

Stranger yet was the mural in the back room. You'd be wandering through the toy section, take a left, enter a nondescript door only to be met with 4 foot tall image of Sam Walton's face and a quote about "customer service" plastered next to it. The attention to detail in the artwork was impressive but absurd. Somehow, that wasn't all; not by a long shot. If you were in the back, you were no more than maybe five feet away from a photo, poster, or printout of Walton's face and some contrived quote of his. Often making liberal use of elipses because of course they did. Everyone knows that meaningless phrases like "listen to your associates" reads more profound if you add an elipses. To me, it reads like an incomplete thought and that's because it is.

Nobody cared about what Walton may or may not have said. Management's only concern was profits and they turned Sam Walton into a psuedo prophet in service of that. I think they're doing this to distract the employees from having real ambitions. Why would anyone leave if they believed Wal-Mart is the be all end all? This search for profits has now led to this. Wonderful. Yet, I'm more outraged than surprised. When I worked there, part of my job was to fuck people over. We'd raise the price on something then lower it a week later and treat it like a discount. You had people in Bentonville pricing things at $14.88. Come on man, you're not slick. There's no mathematical reason why you came to that specific price, you shit-bag.

Yeah, I know it's my fault for having an account with them at all. The thing about customer service is that if you're good at it, the guest will never contemplate deleting their account. Not only am I doing that, I'm changing my debit card number. I'm not going to allow a company like Wal-Mart stalk me and my family. This is a new level of bad customer service, frankly. One that I'm 100% unwilling to entertain let alone play into.

The only thing I want from Wal-Mart at this point is some kind of confirmation that Sam Walton's death was miserable and terrifying. It wouldn't make up for the stalking, but it'd make me feel better to know that the man that unleashed this trash upon us all got what he deserved.